The Marvel Cinematic Universe has a long and frustrating history of setting up compelling narrative threads, only to abandon them for years. Or in some cases, forever. Post-credits scenes tease major promises: exciting new characters like Eros, Clea, and Skaar, or vows of revenge, or seeds for spin-offs (like the Blade/Black Knight team-up that seems destined to remain unrealized). And then, silence. Sometimes the long game pays off: after all, Avengers: Endgame made good on a decade of teases. But just as often, characters and arcs fall into a kind of narrative purgatory. And as much as Marvel has a thing for villains getting killed off too quickly, it’s the ones left alive and unresolved that frustrate more.. SPOILERS for Ironheart follow below.
Ironheart, Marvel’s most recent release, continues this trend – introducing new magical characters with big implications, while ignoring a major loose end from a decade ago that should have been considered. Ironheart‘s ending not only leaves room for a second season that may never happen (raising more concerns for unresolved cliffhangers), but also quietly drops two new (mostly amateur) sorcerers into the MCU: Madeline and Zelma Stanton. They run a candy shop in Chicago that doubles as a magical hub of sorts, and end up directly connected to the show’s central conflict via The Hood.
And yet somehow, despite being open magical practitioners operating outside of Kamar-Taj who are literally untrained and who fit exactly with established red flags, there’s no sign of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mordo. Logically, they should be challenged as part of his “too many sorcerers” mantra, but his absence compounds the issue that his threat began and ended with just one victim.
Ironheart Makes Mordo’s Disappearance Even Harder to Ignore
Back in Doctor Strange (2016), the post-credits sting was a tonal gut punch. Karl Mordo, disillusioned by how recklessly magic was being used, visits former kamar-Taj student (in other words, the exact same profile as Madeline Stanton) Jonathan Pangborn – who had used mystic arts for his own gain, simply to walk again – and steals his powers. Mordo’s chilling new creed, “no more sorcerers,” wasn’t a villain monologue, it was a mission statement: he believed the misuse of magic was corrupting the natural order, and he was going to fix it by force.
That rather makes the Stantons in Ironheart a giant glowing target. Neither Madeline nor her daughter Zelma fully trained at Kamar-Taj: Madeline left when she found she was pregnant, and Zelma – more problematically – taught herself at least partly through TikTok. They seemingly use their magic for commercial gain, running a literal storefront – granted, one they try to keep discreet, but not that discreet. When confronted by The Hood in Ironheart‘s midcredits scene, a known magical threat, Zelma doesn’t retreat into secrecy or call in the Masters of the Mystic Arts – she seems engaged by him. In other words, in multiple ways, Madeline and Zelma are exactly the kind of perversions of the magical order Mordo should be looking to wipe out.
And yet, nothing. Not a whisper. Mordo – at least the mainline MCU version of him – hasn’t been seen since 2016. The Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness version was a variant, not the same man who betrayed his former allies to impose magical order. The fact that Marvel introduced characters exactly in Mordo’s crosshairs without so much as mentioning him is quietly damning. It doesn’t just highlight how long it’s been since they followed up on his arc, it turns his whole crusade into an abandoned subplot. With Ironheart, Marvel adds more unregulated magic into a world Mordo swore to cleanse, and they do it with a kind of narrative shrug. The result isn’t just another dropped thread – it’s a decision that makes one of the MCU’s most promising villain setups look completely toothless.
All 6 episodes of Ironheart are available to stream on Disney+ now.
The post Marvel Just Made The MCU’s Forgotten Villain Look Even Worse appeared first on ComicBook.com.
